How To Create Instagram Eye Candy

F5 on social

I’m not exactly proud of it, but I know how to create engagement bait on social media. For instance, a version of this graphic pulled in a couple thousand Likes across Instagram and Twitter.

I do not think it’s a particularly good graphic. In fact, I think it’s kind of bad! It’s not adjusted for playing time. It just shows the top 10. It’s not obvious why blocking threes is important. It doesn’t doesn’t say anything about how often these players may or may not foul three-point shooters. It’s a mishmash of colors. It’s just a stat as a factoid.

But, for better or worse, this format tends to pop online. More people will have seen that Matisse Thybule is a three-point blocking savant than my opus on Luke Kornet’s Kontest. One took five minutes to make. The other took the better part of a week. That’s the way it goes.

In this tutorial I will show you how you too can harness the dark arts of social media engagement to create your own bait with the power of {ggplot2}.

Let’s jump in.